I’m just send in one link that links to four other articles in it’s first sentence –easier that way. Anyways, the whole debacle [about sexism in the movie The Social Network] has really made me quite sad, because I really liked CJ Cregg from West Wing, and I think a part of me wants to believe that a man who could write CJ wouldn’t write that much misogyny into a movie.

Wow, OKC assembled some awesome stats on LGB users of the popular dating site vs straight users. OMG YOU GUYS THERE’S A MAP OF THE BI-CURIOUS STATES!

Comments

I had a boss a few years back who was an odd sort of racist. He was so afraid of having the racist label pinned on him that he gave special preferential treatment to the minorities. A white person came in to work late got a lecture. A Mexican came in late to work got ignored. A black person came in to work late got a solicitous inquiry as to whether or not their day contained any difficulties. He wouldn’t even give constructive criticism because he was afraid someone would say ‘oh you are just coming down on him because he’s ______’.

A couple folks took advantage, but most of us were irritated by his behavior. You can’t do your job correctly if you can’t get feedback, and we resented being wrapped in swaddling. We never got challenging assignments to help us grow our skill sets because he didn’t want anyone to say ‘you gave them the hard job because they are ______’ We could go in and ask directly, and then he’d refuse us nothing because, as you guessed, he didn’t want us to claim he’d refused because we were ______’

And of course, if any of us brought up a concern of any kind, we’d get the ‘but I’m not racist’ type response. At the time, I didn’t know how to explain it to him, and I’m still not sure he’d have understood. So, I moved on to something where I didn’t feel as constantly and deliberately ‘othered’, at least not by my employer and co-workers.

Which I always thought was odd, as my boss at my next job was more pointedly racist (used slurs and told racist jokes occasionally) but when push came to shove his expectations for his employees were the same, his treatment of them was the same, and when there were racist customers he backed his employees. On the whole, in spite of the fact he thought the ‘flied lice’ joke was the epitome of comedy, I think the second guy was much, much less racist than the first in spite of how it may have looked on the surface.

Ssssssnnnn. Just the other day, I had a woman in one of my classes complaining about how, when she took Sociology, she had a black professor who she claimed acted like he was owed something for being a minority and having achieved so much. Because I still had about 3 hours ahead of me with her, I just said, “…Well, you can test out of Sociology. I did.” What I was thinking was, “I don’t think any black person has said that, ever, and even if they did, why are YOU complaining? Acknowledging struggle isn’t the same thing as an attitude of entitlement, and achievement in the face of adversity does not negate, excuse, or justify said adversity. BITCH.” TOTALLY GOT YUCK IN THE YUM OF HAPPY BLACK GIRL DAY.

And, OH MY GOOOOOOOOD. PESTICIDES ARE OFFICIALLY GOING TO END US ALL. Also: second link in this post with HORRIBLE THINGS in Jacksonville. AAAAAHHHHHHHH

I may need to go to a little demon class to work out all this stress. It’s got to be better than the Christian Karate school nearby (breaking boards with the Lord!). Naamah–Stuhać > Namaste?? WHATEVER, I’m sure demonic yoga practitioners, residents of every state but Mississippi, and the Chernabog throw the BEST Halloween parties.

I cannot STAND it when people assume acknowledging a wrong = whining/complaining/asking for special treatment. And it’s not just a bigotry thing. For example, if someone acknowledges their parents abused them and that’s part of why they have trouble with some aspect of their life, 99% of people immediately wag their fingers and say, “Mustn’t blame them! What you do with your life is your responsibility!” Well, yeah, it is, but that doesn’t exclude acknowledging where your shit is coming from. In fact, you kind of NEED to know where your shit’s coming from in order to sort it out.

And yeah, whenever a marginalized person speaks of his/her accomplishments, skills or positive traits in the same frank way white men a trained/encouraged to speak of theirs, the marginalized person is very often perceived as “uppity” while the white dude is just being honest instead of modest.

I never thought of this, but maybe that’s why the Southern response to accusations of racism is different from responses in the rest of the US (in most of the US, people deny it and accuse you of being evil for calling them racist; in the South, people often act like they just don’t care, or “Well, if that makes me a racist, fine”). Just having a southeastern accent gets you stereotyped an inbred, uncultured hick. Why bother defending against one portion of a stereotype if you’re never going to escape the whole thing?

Of course, both responses to being called on racism are unhelpful, but honestly? I’d rather deal with the Southern response because it doesn’t shut down the conversation so completely as the “turn it around on your accuser” response. In my experience, southerners are more willing to examine individual ideas for racism than, say, Californians, which is part of why I could never have a worthwhile conversation with anyone in film who supported bigoted ideas but didn’t think they could possibly be bigoted, because they voted Dem and wrote checks to Greenpeace.

That’s definitely been an odd experience I’ve had since living in the South; there’s almost more of a cultural acknowledgment of racism for being what it is because of its undeniable association with the South. Since it’s part of the “Southerner stereotype,” you almost have to talk about it. The whole thing’s led to an odd feeling of, “Well, up north, it’s not that people are less racist, they’re just hiding it because you’re not supposed to talk about it. They’re pretending not to be racist when in fact, they just know it’s not okay to be.” You have to pick between those two evils, essentially.

Whereas down where I live now, I have seen more Confederate flags and borderline-obscene anti-Obama bumper stickers in the past three or four years than I have in all the rest of my life prior. And I was definitely given a heads-up the other day about a grocery store I should NEVER EVER go into, but especially not on Thursday, because it is Klan Meeting Night. WHAT. I think a big part of that is not only the cultural acceptance of the existence of racism, but also the acceptance of racism itself… but that’s not really what we’re talking about here.